Pittsburgh Pirates Takeaways & Throwaways – An extra inning win in the desert

It may have taken 13 innings and well over five hours, but the Pittsburgh Pirates defeated the Arizona Diamondbacks 12-10 on Sunday, giving them a series win. The Pirates held the lead at multiple times but the pesky Diamondbacks just wouldn’t go away. In the marathon game, the Pirates collected 20 hits, including a timely pitch hit from one of the starting pitchers. Here are the takeaways and throwaways from the game.

Takeaways

• David Freese has been an incredible value at what the Pirates are paying him for the 2016 season. Freese went three for five and all of his hits were doubles. He also walked and scored twice and drove in an insurance run in the 12th inning. When Jung ho Kang is fully healed from his injury and takes over third base, Freese will be an incredible bat to bring off the bench or act as a late game replacement.
• Another hitter that has been scorching hot at the plate is Starling Marte. Marte racked up four hits in six at-bats and added a walk as well. He and Freese have been a great 1-2 punch in the middle of the lineup. Freese has yet to hit a ball out of the park and Marte only has two, but they are hitting a lot of doubles which still lead to driving in runs. The lineup has been hitting like crazy as of late, but those two hitters have been integral to the team’s success.

Throwaways

• The good news is that Francisco Liriano pitched six innings, improving after his last start where he did not finish five. The bad news is that in those six innings, all four of the runs he gave up came off of home runs. He did settle down after the third inning and was fortunate that his teammates cobbled together a big inning in the fourth. But hopefully as Liriano distances himself from the hamstring injury that caused him to miss a start earlier in the season, he’ll return to his usual form of a dominating starter. He’s in line to take on the Cincinnati Reds on Friday, so hopefully that start goes a little better than the one on Sunday did.
• Andrew McCutchen‘s woes at the plate continued on Sunday, as he registered one hit in six at-bats while striking out four times. McCutchen is clearly deep in a slump right now, and the best medicine to cure a slump is to keep going out there. He is a smart enough hitter that eventually he’ll revert back to the pitcher that we are used to seeing.

W – Neftali Feliz (1-0)

L – Evan Marshall (0-1)

S – Arquimedes Caminero (1)

Line of the night: Tonight, the line of the night goes to the most unexpected hitter in the lineup: Jonathon Niese.

Niese had one at-bat in the 13th and came through with a base hit that knocked in the 12th run for the Pirates, giving them a slight cushion before Arizona came to the plate in the bottom half of the inning. It’s not often that starting pitchers get to pinch hit, so it’s all the more impressive that Niese was able to connect on one and drive in a run. He’ll be able to brag all season long to the other pitchers in the rotation about what he did on Sunday.

Up next: The Pirates start a three game series in Denver against the Colorado Rockies on Monday at 8:40pm Eastern. Jeff Locke and Chris Rusin will be the starters in the first game of the series. Locke will look to rebound from a disastrous start his last time out, when he pitched three innings and gave up eight runs while walking four and striking out two. Rusin will be making his first start of 2016, after making relief appearances in three games earlier in the season. Because Rusin is a lefty, it will not be surprising if Clint Hurdle elects to sit John Jaso and use a predominantly right handed lineup.